Epstein files give weight to conspiracy theories we once dismissed

It’s impossible to read the latest tranche of the Epstein files released by the US Department of Justice and not conclude that this apparent act of democratic disclosure is actually intended to obscure.

Most probably, this deeply compromised gesture of “transparency” is aimed at protecting the man who almost certainly features in some of the countless black redactions that make many of the files meaningless. That man, of course, is US President Donald Trump, whose decades-long friendship with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein is on the record, and whose own reputation for sexual misconduct and abuse is well known.

And yet whose name is eerily absent in 3 million pages of files dumped on January 30.

Trump denies all the allegations of sexual misconduct that have been made against him by about 18 women. In 2023, a New York court found him liable for sexual abuse in a civil case.

The words of the women who accused Trump made no difference in his march to power, and it is difficult to escape the desolate conclusion that none of the victims’ accounts in the Epstein files will matter much either. Of course, there is no evidence at all of Trump having abused any of the women involved in the Epstein matter.

Being mentioned in the files does not, of course, mean that a person had any knowledge of, or involvement in, Epstein’s crimes. But the files have caused immense reputation damage to many, as well as reading like a Who’s Who: Ghastly Version.

The list of Epstein’s friends in high places is long: Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Noam Chomsky, New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch, billionaire Richard Branson, Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, photographer Andres Serrano, Harvard professor Martin Nowak, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, Yale professor Roger Schank, NASCAR driver Brian Vickers, former US Treasury secretary and one-time Harvard University president Larry Summers, former Barclays boss Jes Staley.

Many of the powerful men (and some women, notably Sarah Ferguson, the former duchess of York) gave the impression that they had ceased contact with Epstein after he was convicted of child sex charges in 2008. But the files contradict some of their accounts.

On her substack, former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown did a useful accounting of what powerful figures have said about their association with Epstein versus what is revealed in the files.

For example: “Elon Musk on X, September 2025: ‘Epstein tried to get me to go to his island and I REFUSED’. November 2012, Musk to Epstein (in an email): ‘What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?’.”

Brown also juxtaposes the public 2025 statement of New York investor Andrew Farkas (“The basis of my relationship with Mr. Epstein was our business dealings.”) with his 2018 email to Epstein: “As someone who considers himself to be amongst your best friends … I love you … Xoxo.”

There is Virgin founder Richard Branson asking Epstein to visit his private island, “as long as you bring your harem!”, which Branson insists was a reference to Epstein’s staff.

There is famous linguist Noam Chomsky, beloved figure of the left, advising his registered sex offender friend on reputation rehabilitation, and lamenting “the hysteria that has developed about the abuse of women”.

Try not to grow hysterical as you read on – there are depositions recounting brutal rapes by Epstein. There is the off-hand 2009 email from Epstein to [name redacted] asking: “Where are you? Are you ok, I loved the torture video.”

Or the 2011 communication to [again, name redacted] which reads, “do you want me to try to do her … or just torture her on fri”.

Despite the apparent shielding of countless men’s identities, many of the victims’ names were not redacted properly by Department of Justice officials, and they are identifiable in some of the videos and photographs posted.

The documents contain small details which lay bare the defining cruelty of the entire transnational, highly populated sex-trafficking operation, an operation that was apparently invisible to the people closest to its ringleader.

In one transcript of grand jury testimony taken in 2007, ahead of Epstein’s 2008 conviction for child sex-trafficking charges, you can read about a 14-year-old Floridian girl who was taken into Epstein’s “massage” room to tend to him, and who was made to engage in sexual activity she didn’t want. During this unwanted sex, the transcript reads, the victim “looks at him kind of funny, and [Epstein] sarcastically – which is her word – he sarcastically says, ‘What’s the matter?’.”

The sadism speaks for itself. What’s the matter?

Writing for The Times in London, Helen Rumbelow notes the no one’s-watching misogyny redolent in the way the men communicate. Women are referred to as “pussy” (the body part Trump famously reduced women to, in the leaked 2005 Access Hollywood tape), whores and “c---” (a collective term, apparently).

Meanwhile, men express courtly love for Epstein. Longevity and wellness guru Peter Attia, a bestselling author, tells Epstein’s staffer that he gets “withdrawals” when he hasn’t seen Epstein for a while. Post-file-dump, Attia has issued the most grovelling of public apologies. His emails to Epstein show how practised he is in grovelling.

These people either were ignorant they were enjoying the hospitality and help of a convicted child sex offender (inconceivable, particularly in the internet age), or they didn’t care.

There were those who shunned Epstein’s company, such as Tina Brown, who was invited to a 2010 dinner for him, hosted by (former Prince) Andrew, and attended by many of Manhattan’s not-so-good and great, including Woody Allen and former TV journalist Charlie Rose (who was accused of sexual harassment and who settled a case over it).

As Brown recounts in her book Palace Papers, she screamed at the well-known Manhattan PR Peggy Siegal, who rang her: “What the f--- is this, Peggy? The paedophile’s ball?”

“She backed off with high-pitched gibbering about ‘all that Epstein stuff being so overblown’,” Brown writes.

Brown had, as editor of the Daily Beast website, run some of the first investigative reporting about the 2008 sweetheart deal Epstein secured from Alex Acosta, then-US attorney for the Southern District of Florida (who later served as Trump’s labor secretary) for soliciting prostitution from just one 14-year-old girl, even though there were reams of evidence that Epstein was a “longtime serial paedophile”.

Clearly there were plenty who shared Peggy-the-PR’s view – their friend was ever so powerful and rich, and only slightly rapey (just one 14-year-old, just one little minimum security sentence). Besides, none of them had witnessed anything of the sort proven by the prosecutors.

The Epstein files are posted on a clunky, seemingly Soviet-era website, organised (or not) into lists of numbered files which give no description of their contents and no context. You have to click into and open each file individually, which makes them difficult to review quickly.

But despite the nakedly cynical way in which they protect so many of Epstein’s associates with their black-box redactions, the files expose a nihilistic, transactional worldview that seems prevalent among the financial and political establishment, at least in the US.

As Thucydides told us, the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

We used to mock the tin-foil-hat-wearing American paranoiacs who claimed the world was being run by a cabal of paedophiles. Certainly, it looks like some of their associates are.

Jacqueline Maley is a senior writer and columnist.

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